When we sit together by the river brink on sunny days, or on the

greensward under the yews in our old garden, we are always telling
ancient Celtic romances, and planning, even acting, new ones.

Francesca's mind and mine are poorly furnished with facts of any
sort; but when the kind scholars in our immediate neighbourhood

furnish necessary information and inspiration, we promptly turn it
into dramatic form, and serve it up before their wondering and

admiring gaze. It is ever our habit to 'make believe' with the
children; and just as we played ballads in Scotland and plotted

revels in the Glen at Rowardennan, so we instinctively fall into the
habit of thought and speech that surrounds us here.

This delights our grave and reverend signiors, and they give
themselves up to our whimsicalities with the most whole-hearted

zeal. It is days since we have spoken of one another by those names
which were given to us in baptism. Francesca is Finola the Festive.

Eveleen Colquhoun is Ethnea. I am the harper, Pearla the Melodious.
Miss Peabody is Sheela the Skilful Scribe, who keeps for posterity a

record of all our antics, in the Speckled Book of Salemina. Dr.
Gerald is Borba the Proud, the Ard-ri or overking. Mr. Colquhoun is

really called Dermod, but he would have been far too modest to
choose Dermot O'Dyna for his Celtic name, had we not insisted; for

this historicpersonage was not only noble-minded, generous, of
untarnished honour, and the bravest of the brave, but he was as

handsome as he was gallant, and so much the idol of the ladies that
he was sometimes called Dermat-na-man, or Dermot of the women.

Of course we have a corps of shanachies, or story-tellers, gleemen,
gossipreds, leeches, druids, gallowglasses, bards, ollaves,

urraghts, and brehons; but the children can always be shifted from
one role to another, and Benella and the Button Boy, although they

are quite unaware of the honours conferred upon them, are often
alluded to in our romances and theatrical productions.

Aunt David's garden is not a half bad substitute for the old Moy-
Mell, the plain of pleasure of the ancient Irish, when once you have

the key to its treasures. We have made a new and authoritative
survey of its geographical features and compiled a list of its

legendary landmarks, which, strangely enough, seem to have been
absolutely unknown to Miss Llewellyn-Joyce.

In the very centre is the Forradh, or Place of Meeting, and on it is
our own Lia Fail, Stone of Destiny. The one in Westminster Abbey,

carried away from Scotland by Edward I., is thought by many scholars
to be unauthentic, and we hope that ours may prove to have some

historical value. The only test of a Stone of Destiny, as I
understand it, is that it shall 'roar' when an Irish monarch is

inaugurated; and that our Lia Fail was silent when we celebrated
this impressiveceremony reflects less upon its own powers, perhaps,

than upon the pedigree of our chosen Ard-ri.
The arbour under the mountain ash is the Fairy Palace of the Quicken

Tree, and on its walls is suspended the Horn of Foreknowledge, which
if any one looks on it in the morning, fasting, he will know in a

moment all things that are to happen during that day.
The clump of willows is the Wood of the Many Sallows (a willow-tree

is familiarly known as a 'sally' in Ireland). Do you know Yeats's
song, put to a quaint old Irish air?

'Down by the sally gardens my love and I did meet,
She passed the sally gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree,
But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.'

The summer-house is the Greenan; that is, grianan, a bright, sunny
place. On the arm of a tree in the Greenan hangs something you

might (if you are dull) mistake for a plaited garland of rushes hung
with pierced pennies; but it really is our Chain of Silence, a

useful article of bygone ages, which the lord of a mansion shook
when he wished an attentivehearing, and which deserved a better

fate and a longer survival than it has met. Jackeen's Irish terrier
is Bran,--though he does not closely resemble the great Finn's

sweet-voiced, gracefully-shaped, long-snouted hound; the coracle
lying on the shore of the little lough--the coracle made of skin,

like the old Irish boats--is the Wave-Sweeper; and the faithful mare
that we hire by the day is, by your leave, Enbarr of the Flowing

Mane. No warrior was ever killed on the back of this famous steed,
for she was as swift as the clear, cold wind of spring, travelling

with equal ease and speed on land and sea, an' may the divil fly
away wid me if that same's not true.

We no longer find any difficulty in remembering all this
nomenclature, for we are 'under gesa' to use no other. When you are

put under gesa to reveal or to conceal, to defend or to avenge, it
is a sort of charm or spell; also an obligation of honour. Finola

is under gesa not to write to Alba more than six times a week and
twice on Sundays; Sheela is bound by the same charm to give us

muffins for afternoon tea; I am vowed to forget my husband when I am
relating romances, and allude to myself, for dramatic purposes, as a

maidenprincess, or a maiden of enchanting and all-conquering
beauty. And if we fail to abide by all these laws of the modern

Dedannans of Devorgilla, which are written in the Speckled Book of
Salemina, we are to pay eric-fine. These fines are collected with

all possible solemnity, and the children delight in them to such an
extent that occasionally they break the law for the joy of the

penalty. If you have ever read the Fate of the Children of Turenn,
you remember that they were to pay to Luga the following eric-fine

for the slaying of their father, Kian: two steeds and a chariot,
seven pigs, a hound whelp, a cooking-spit, and three shouts on a

hill. This does not at first seem excessive, if Kian were a good
father, and sincerely mourned; but when Luga began to explain the

hidden snares that lay in the pathway, it is small wonder that the
sons of Turenn felt doubt of ever being able to pay it, and that

when, after surmounting all the previous obstacles, they at last
raised three feeble shouts on Midkena's Hill, they immediately gave

up the ghost.
The story told yesterday by Sheela the Scribe was the Magic Thread-

Clue, or the Pursuit of the Gilla Dacker, Benella and the Button Boy
being the chief characters; Finola's was the Voyage of the Children

of Corr the Swift-Footed (the Ard-ri's pseudonym for American
travellers); while mine, to be told to-morrow, is called the Quest

of the Fair Strangers, or the Fairy Quicken Tree of Devorgilla.
Chapter XXX. The Quest of the Fair Strangers, or

The Fairy Quicken-Tree of Devorgilla.*
'Before the King

The bards will sing.
And there recall the stories all

That give renown to Ireland.'
Eighteenth Century Song.

Englished by George Sigerson.
*It seems probable that this tale records a real incident which took

place in Aunt David's garden. Penelope has apparently listened with
such attention to the old Celtic romances as told by the Ard-ri and

Dermot O'Dyna that she has, consciously or unconsciously, reproduced
something of their atmosphere and phraseology. The delightful

surprise at the end must have been contrived by Salemina, when she,
in her character of Sheela the Scribe, gazed into the Horn of

Foreknowledge and learned the events that were to happen that day.--
K.D.W.

PEARLA'S STORY.
Three maidens once dwelt in a castle in that part of the Isle of

Weeping known as the cantred of Devorgilla, Devorgilla of the Green
Hill Slopes; and they were baptized according to druidical rites as

Sheela the Scribe, Finola the Festive, and Pearla the Melodious,
though by the dwellers in that land they were called the Fair